Mobile devices and other electronic devices contain ever increasing content, with upgrades, equivalents, and other content created for them each year. Mobile devices, for example, store address books, licensed applications, user-generated content such as digital images, and third-party content such as ringtones, wallpaper, and music files, to name only a few types of content. Content is not easily restored or transferred when the device is deactivated. It is difficult for a user to remember what content was stored on the device, the correct version of the content for a particular device, or even where she acquired the content. Even if she can discover all this information, the process of restoring content to the new device is still time-consuming, error prone, and tedious, and in some cases, not possible.
When restoring content to a device, the user is also unaware of upgrades to content. Unknown to the user, a content provider may have released a new version of content or an equivalent, more popular version. The user misses an opportunity to get upgraded, more desirable content, and the content provider misses an opportunity to sell, license, or offer a subscription to new content.
Users face these same problems when upgrading to a new device or other device. The new device may require different versions of content: a simple transfer of content from the old to the new mobile device will not work.
Furthermore, due to licensing restrictions, when a user wants to transfer licensed content from one device to another, a simple backup and restore to the second device is not usually permitted.